


The Care and Keeping of a High-Maintenance Master

by Kantayra



Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [20]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Bubbles - Freeform, Humor, Insecurity, Love Confessions, M/M, Mind Games, Saving the World, Sea Anemones, Stolen Bodies, Switching, The Master Has Issues, The Master is a player, World Domination
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:16:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646634
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: The ongoing efforts of two idiots in love to create the most melodramatic, overwrought scene in all of creation, while bellowing out their bizarre courtship rituals to all the universe.Or: the one in which Simm!Master is a giant sea anemone and the Tenth Doctor is a bunch of anthropomorphic bubbles, and neither of them seems to find this odd in the slightest.
Relationships: Tenth Doctor/The Master (Simm), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Series: The Masters and Doctors in the Matrix [20]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1592659
Comments: 12
Kudos: 48





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: Sections of this story are exceptionally silly. I feel like I should warn for crack, but then again, the Doctor and the Master are also exceptionally silly (especially for each other) so that I'm not quite convinced the silliness is OOC. I'll leave it for the reader to judge.

It wasn’t that any incarnation of the Master could ever be called _low-maintenance_ , per se. The Doctor wasn’t foolish enough to think that.

Still, it was a definite trend that at particular times over the Master’s lives, usually when traumatic or stressful events had taken place, the Master’s regeneration would turn extra impatient, unstable, or violent.

The Time War, unsurprisingly, qualified as both traumatic and stressful. The Doctor could understand: he’d had to deal with much the same throughout his own recent regenerations.

Understanding, however, was hardly enough to stabilise a thoroughly volatile Master at his worst. The Doctor had known the Master long enough now that he recognised the signs. There had been a certain restlessness about the Master of late, as though he were pacing his cage compulsively, feeling pent in. He would lash out soon, sharp and quick and angry, and as always, the Doctor would be on the receiving end of that attack.

That day started off typically enough. As Time Lords, neither of them had much biological need for sleep, but the Master seemed to have picked it up as a purely recreational activity at some point over the millennia, and so the two of them spent several hours in bed together each morning. This activity consisted of the Doctor sneaking detachable TARDIS parts and his sonic screwdriver under his pillow and then tweaking them while the Master slept soundly beside him, limbs tangled around him like a lethal trap, a low-level telepathic connection humming between them to keep the Master’s nightmares at bay.

Every so often, the Doctor would take a moment to wipe the grease from his hands, take off his glasses, and spend a good minute stroking the Master’s soft, exposed underbelly. The action earned him happy little murmurs while the Master was asleep; while the Master was awake…well, that was a different story.

It was a dangerous thing, because the Doctor could very easily get used to this. It wouldn’t do to forget who the Master was or what he was capable of. But sometimes, when they were snug and sheltered and alone like this, the Doctor felt comfortable relaxing his guard, just a bit.

As if the Master heard his thoughts, he began to stir from his sleep, nuzzling the Doctor’s chest as he did so before turning the action into a more aggressive head-butt against the Doctor’s sternum.

“Hello, there,” the Doctor said with a smile, and pressed a soft kiss to the centre of the Master’s forehead.

The Master grunted and then grinned, a smile halfway between genuine cruelty and mischievous little boy. “I want to kill someone,” he informed the Doctor, almost seductively.

Time for mind-games, then. “I bet you do,” the Doctor agreed.

One of the Master’s hands came up to encircle the Doctor’s neck, shoving him back down onto the bed by the jugular. “Give me permission,” he commanded. “I want to hear a death sentence issued from your lips.”

The Master squeezed once and then loosened his hold so that the Doctor could speak. The Doctor took the opportunity to fill his bypass; one never knew when the Master would get a sudden yen for some breath-play. “I give you permission,” the Doctor said. “Go ahead and kill someone. Anyone.”

The Master pouted at this, changing on a knife’s edge from a man-eating tiger back into a cuddly pussycat. “You’re just saying that because none of the people I can kill are real,” he sulked against the Doctor’s throat, nuzzling him once affectionately while draping his entire body possessively around the Doctor. Cuddly pussycats were, after all, experts at being oppressive at the same time as being sweet.

“True,” the Doctor agreed. “Want to go kill someone anyway?”

“I don’t need _walkies_!” the Master snapped in irritation. He loomed up over the Doctor, scowling down at him, nostrils flaring as he breathed in the Doctor’s scent.

“What do you need, then?”

In retrospect, it should have been a simple question. But the Master being the Master, and the Doctor being the Doctor, instead it was a veritable minefield of twisted illogic, past slights, and warped viewpoints. The Master bared his teeth in response, and the Doctor settled himself in to play the long-game. This one might take a good while.

***

When the Master had awoken, warm and comfortable, the universe clutched in one fist, and the Doctor in the other, he had, for one moment, felt actually _content_.

He’d taken no time at all pinning the Doctor’s eager body beneath him. In response, the Doctor had only beamed longingly up at the Master, seemingly entirely unperturbed by the Master’s gruff actions. One tentative hand reached out to stroke the skin of the Master’s hipbone, offering him everything.

The Master realised then the maudlin direction his thoughts had taken and shrugged the Doctor’s hand off with a grudging little “harrumph”.

The problem was that, as long as the Master could remember, he’d always wanted _more_. More power, more control, more _Doctor_. Especially the last. And all his lives he’d been so deprived of all three that he’d never come close to satiating any of his desires.

Now, though…

The Master looked down at the Doctor trapped beneath him, focused his attention, and wiped the whole of the universe from existence.

Under him, the Doctor yawned.

Reluctantly, the Master brought the universe back. Instead, this time he singled out one particular life, randomly selected, and then, with a thought, sent them to their death in screaming agony.

The Doctor scratched the hair behind his ear until it stood up at an absolutely ridiculous angle and asked, “Having fun playing god again?”

The Master scowled at him. “How can you possibly know what I’m doing?”

“You’ve got that cat-who-ate-the-canary smile. Nothing good ever comes from that smile.”

“Nothing?” the Master demanded, and leaned in to pant hot and heavy against the Doctor’s neck.

“Well…” the Doctor conceded, and his hand drifted down the Master’s neck to trace the line of his bare spine.

The Master caught the Doctor’s hand with a snarl, twisted the Doctor’s arm behind him, and forced him face down into the mattress. He pinned the Doctor with his full body weight and listened for the rushed double-pulsing of the Doctor’s hearts.

The Doctor tensed for one moment, but then yielded into the Master’s hold, pressing that skinny little arse of his back into the Master’s erection in offering. And, yes, his pulses were elevated, but the scent that permeated his pores was the sweetness of arousal, without even a hint of acrid fear.

The Master nosed the line of the Doctor’s spine and then yanked on the Doctor’s arm further, just to be certain. No. No fear there, only desire. No resistance either when the Master flipped the Doctor onto his back, forced his way between the Doctor’s thighs, and entered him in one swift, punishing thrust.

The Doctor’s eyes met his without hesitation, dark and wanting, and he wrapped his free arm around the Master’s neck, drawing him in, pressing their foreheads together as they panted and moaned and undulated together. This close, the Master couldn’t help but pick up all the Doctor’s stray thoughts – as telepathically scatter-brained as he’d always been – and the waves of affection and absolute happiness that emanated from the Doctor were almost unbearable.

The Master lost himself in the Doctor, the way he always did, whispering sweet promises into the Doctor’s lips that would make him blush afterwards at the sheer sappiness of it all. He found himself moving sensually between the Doctor’s legs, rocking into the Doctor not only to seek pleasure, but to give it as well.

Their mating was slow and deep and perfect. They knew each other’s bodies well now, after so long, and the sex had gone from lovely to spectacular as they’d learned each other better and better. The Doctor smiled up at him, looking entirely enamoured, the full focus of that incredible mind fixed solely on the Master, and…

Well, like every time before, the Master came.

And the Doctor came in response, as if bringing the Master pleasure was what he wanted most in the universe.

It was absolutely perfect. It was what the Master had always wanted. He was, once again, completely contented.

It was so wrong he didn’t even know where to begin.

Afterwards, as the Master panted back against the cooling sheets, he finally put shape to his dilemma. He now had all the power, all the control, all the Doctor, so that there was no more that he could ever want, and nothing he could take that wouldn’t been given freely—eagerly, even.

He had it all.

Yet, strangely, he also had nothing. None of it was _real_ , even the Doctor, who was real but would never, ever look at the Master like that if there were actual lives at stake. No, the Master needed the truth: needed to slice his way down through the Matrix’s sterile façade until he found the Doctor’s blood and guts and that inner core of hate and ugliness that he _knew_ lurked deep down.

Oh, he’d had his fun with the Doctor’s body, but now clearly, something needed to change. It was time.

***

The Doctor hadn’t meant to sleep. Even more so because he hadn’t intended to wake up to find the Master really had gone walkies.

He lolled groggily for a few seconds, hoping in vain that his senses were deceiving him, but the Master’s time signature was no longer rubbing alongside his and the Master’s scent in the bed was rapidly fading. He tried opening up his mind just to see how far the Master had wandered and immediately shot out of bed when the answer was ‘so far he’s essentially undetectable’. The Master had been fidgety lately, true, but he was a fidgety Master in general; he’d never gone completely off the grid like this before.

The Doctor had a moment of genuine “no, no, no” panic because he’d felt this twice before: first when the Master had refused to regenerate, and second when the Master had sacrificed himself behind the Time Lock. They had been dreadful moments when the Doctor had _felt_ that brilliant, mad connection at the back of his mind fray and snap. But this time was different: their bond was stronger now, woven tight through the hours/years/eons they’d spent performing every sex act the Master could think of. This time the terror turned sharply from “no, no, no” to “oh no, you don’t: not _this_ time.”

One sniff was all it took to determine that his Master wasn’t within either of their mindscapes: too far for that. The Doctor was initially surprised to find his TARDIS still present. He was keyed into her the same way that the Master was keyed into his universe pendant, so if the Master wanted to play a proper game of hide-and-seek, of course he couldn’t use take her for that. But if he’d _really_ wanted to make afterlife difficult for the Doctor, he could’ve whisked her off somewhere far away and left the Doctor stranded. The fact that the Master had left TARDIS made it all too clear that he wanted the Doctor to chase after him, for yet another mind game.

The TARDIS hummed contentedly when he burst through the doors and dashed directly for the console. “Find me that exasperating lunatic,” he pleaded, threw some levers at not-quite-random and lurched into the universe with the parking brake still on for a good decade or so before he remembered to turn it off.

They rematerialised at the end of the universe.

The Doctor frowned and stepped outside for one good telepathic sniff. The Master lingered in the air like an exotic cologne – _Deranged_ by Dior – but the scent was old, from when the Doctor had first found his Master here.

The TARDIS jittered telepathically as if in memory, and at that point the Futurekind ran screaming from the shadows, so the Doctor hightailed it back into the TARDIS and made a tactical retreat.

“You know where he’ll have gone, if he’s in a mood, right?” the Doctor sighed wearily, and dematerialised.

The TARDIS, in perfect accord, rematerialised them on 21st-century Earth. A quick peek aboard the Valiant revealed that, yes, the Master had indeed once again reordered the universe so that the Toclafane decimated the population of Earth but, no, the Master himself hadn’t stuck around to watch the show.

Still, that said something about the Master’s current mind-set. When he was in a good mood, he sometimes forgot to punish both Earth and the Doctor entirely.

“Where could he be?” the Doctor asked the TARDIS rhetorically, squinting at the locator sensors through his glasses. “I doubt he’s gone back to the wastelands. Do you think?” The TARDIS hummed discordantly. “Yeah… Not really his style, given a choice. Somewhere we’ve gone in the afterlife, then?”

Together, they tried the Spires of Triton, which remained frozen in interstitial space from the Master’s chronon bomb, and then the Vylix Galaxy, where apparently everyone still shot at blue police-boxes on sight.

In the Firestone Nebula, the Doctor actually found himself and the Master, but they were themselves from last week, so the other him obviously didn’t know what happened next week, and if last week’s Master knew, he wasn’t telling. The whole incident would’ve collapsed the timeline of a regular universe, of course, but the Matrix was contrary enough that it just reordered all of time-space so that last week’s Doctor and Master became next week’s Doctor and Master instead, and by the time the Doctor left, he couldn’t even remember where he’d been, because it was suddenly his future.

Around this time, the Doctor started to get frustrated. “Come on, old girl,” he soothed the TARDIS. “You’ve got a better nose on you than I’ve got…”

The time rotor rose once listlessly, as if considering the problem carefully, and then fell with more surety as the dematerialisation circuit kicked in.

The Doctor peered cautiously out the door when they’d rematerialised; after all, locating a petulant Master generally involved stepping into a lethal trap.

The Doctor frowned. Lethal traps were not, typically, set in the Champagne Pleasure Springs of the Moons of Euphines. The Champagne Pleasure Springs of the Moons of Euphines _had_ , however, been a particular fixation of his, back when he’d been…

He spotted his Third self the moment he had the thought, lounging back against the smooth volcanic rocks, the bubbling champagne of one of the spa pools halfway up his bare chest. And there, beside him, was the Master. But not _his_ Master.

The Doctor gave the TARDIS an affectionate pat nonetheless. “You tried your best,” he sighed. “So did I…”

At that moment, the Third Doctor turned from where he’d been whispering something (salacious, no doubt, the Tenth Doctor thought longingly) into the Thirteenth Master’s ear. The Thirteenth Master chuckled in response in that way that still did strange things to the Doctor’s common sense eight whole regenerations later.

“I say,” the Third Doctor said upon noticing him, “what am I doing here?”

The Thirteenth Master turned as well, a look of warm humour and mischievous villainy in those incredible eyes of his. The Tenth Doctor stood there gaping like a fish in response – a dumb, horny fish, to be precise. Probably some kind of spawning salmon.

“I believe he’s looking for me,” the Thirteenth Master concluded, prodding the Tenth Doctor’s telepathic aura once, deliciously, and sending a shiver down the Tenth Doctor’s spine.

The Third Doctor scowled at the telepathic shenanigans occurring right under his nose. “Why the devil would I be looking for you?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Not me,” the Master corrected, “me.”

“Yes, well, not me, me, too,” the Third Doctor argued. “That still doesn’t explain why he’s here.”

The Tenth Doctor whimpered just a little in fond memory of his own incomprehensible arguments with his Master. And also at the fact that, if his Third incarnation’s carefully fixed stoic expression was anything to go by, the Thirteenth Master’s hand was doing something very inappropriate indeed under all those bubbles. It made sense; after all, what Master wouldn’t?

“I don’t suppose you would…?” the Doctor trailed off hopefully.

“Know what I’m up to five regenerations later?” The Thirteenth Master arched one eyebrow.

“Yeah…” the Doctor sighed and scratched his head resignedly. “A bit much to hope for, wasn’t it?”

“Ever the foolish optimist, aren’t you, my dear?” The Master directed the last statement to the Third Doctor, who was now noticeably squirming in the champagne pool. “However,” he added, almost as an aside, “I am telepathically linked to every molecule in this universe, and if any particular incarnation of myself were present in it, I would know.”

“He’s not even here?” the Tenth Doctor blurted in surprise. “But if also he’s not in our mindscapes…” That left the outer Matrix.

“I couldn’t help you there, even if I wanted to,” the Master said. “You know me better than I do, after all.”

The Doctor frowned. That was a clue, he was reasonably certain, but he was unlikely to get anything more because the Master had now fully turned his attentions to the Third Doctor. The Doctor got one good look at his Third’s hand settling itself onto the Master’s back and guiding the Master to straddle his lap, and—

The Doctor adjusted his trousers and returned to his TARDIS. “Where would my Master go?” he asked himself again, but this time focusing on an entirely different plane of his existence. The TARDIS dematerialised from the universe and slipped back out into the Matrix at large.

“Right. First off: what’s in the Matrix?” he asked the TARDIS out loud somewhat unnecessarily. “Well, every Time Lord who ever existed: that’s its primary purpose, isn’t it? But whose mind would he visit? Mine, obviously, and…” He dwelt on the problem for far too long and concluded, at last: “Mine. There’s never really been anyone else for him, has there?”

The TARDIS hummed in agreement with that, in a vaguely sarcastic way. The ‘no duh’ was clearly implied.

“So, not visiting some _one_. What some _thing_ is there? There’s the data storage, and the integration circuits. Time-space modelling – he does hate the temporal schema, doesn’t he? Also not too fond of the pain inhibitors. Then there are the incoming data streams. The control centre. And… Why am I even continuing to list things when there’s something called the ‘control centre’ and I’m hunting for someone who named himself ‘the Master’?”

The TARDIS vibrated once in a way that was really quite nice.

He grinned up at her time rotor. “Agreed. _Allons-y_!”

***

The fresh scent of the Master hit the Doctor in a wild, invigorating rush the moment he opened the TARDIS doors. If every single other system in his body hadn’t just slid back into relieved alignment with the Master’s own biorhythms, that would’ve been a clue.

However, the Doctor didn’t ‘see’ the Master anywhere. Physical bodies and objects didn’t manifest here in the outer Matrix; those constructs only lived within the cocoon of each Time Lord’s mindscape. However, the Doctor could extend the TARDIS shields to project that physical reality, almost like a holographic generator. As a result, he was able to walk around and experience the control centre as if it were the real room that housed the Matrix interface on the real Gallifrey. The Master wasn’t manifest within the TARDIS shield bubble; beyond that, the Doctor had to squint to interpret the streams of data. The Master was, not unsurprisingly, fair superior in talent at surviving in that incorporeal milieu.

The Doctor followed his nose (and another certain overly interested portion of his anatomy) and discovered that the Master wasn’t out in the wilds but, oddly enough, seemed to be located directly in the centre of main computer.

The Doctor sniffed after him, licking buttons and access panels as he went. The delicious Master flavour seemed strongest at the access port where raw Time-Lord data was saved into the Matrix for processing.

Under normal circumstances, the data flow would have been overwhelming, but it was merely a trickle these days: only the Doctor’s and Master’s current incarnations still out there to be uploaded, the Doctor supposed. It allowed the Doctor to spot something very definitely not right just by the access port. With the expected chaos of incoming data from every Time Lord on Gallifrey, the tiny hole would have been completely obscured, but now the Doctor could spot it, as just a glint of light at first.

The Doctor frowned and leaned closer. The hole, just the width of a pinprick, was very well concealed, indeed, cleverly hidden but still undeniably there. And the light coming from it wasn’t the same as the ‘light’ in the Matrix as generated by the TARDIS shields. It had been a long time since the Doctor had seen real-universe light, but he’d never forgotten it.

The Doctor took a step back in disbelief. “You brilliant, diabolical _maniac_ …” he said in a mixture of horror and awe.

Because, somehow, the Master had sneaked in a backdoor from within the Matrix out into the real Gallifrey again. No wonder the Doctor hadn’t been able to find him!

As the Doctor boggled at the Master’s latest refusal to accept any sort of death peacefully, he heard ( _actually_ heard, not just ‘heard’) sounds coming from the other side of the pinhole. Someone was moving out there. On real-world Gallifrey, something was alive and moving, and the Master was out there too, and…

“Oh no.”

The Doctor pressed his eye to the pinhole to reality and could just barely make out the scene beyond. Through the ghostly glow of circuitry, humanoid figures were moving in a room in the real world. It must’ve been the Matrix control room. The Doctor couldn’t make out what any of the figures looked like, but one of them vibrated semi-erotically against his hindbrain every time it passed the pinhole, as if luring him in.

He gulped. There was his Master, at long last.

But how had the Master got his body out? The Doctor’s Matrix physical form was a construct; he could, if he wanted, dissolve into a data stream and slip through the pinhole. However, when the Doctor tested it out with one telepathic ‘fingertip’, he could feel his cohesion wavering the instant it stretched beyond the confines the Matrix. Without the Matrix's backup, his data would decay rapidly.

If he took a deep telepathic breath, maybe he’d be able to keep his existence intact for ten seconds or so. The Master was significantly more experienced in these matters, but not so much so that he could survive for hours in the outside universe the way he had done.

The moving figure was a clue, though. Even if the Master could hold his data-matrix for an impossibly long time, he’d still just be a stream of bytes. The fact that there was an actual physical shape indicated that…

With a groan and a bang of his forehead against the Matrix wall, the Doctor realised that the Master had got back into his old bad habit of stealing bodies. For the Master, it would’ve been child’s play: stream out of the pinhole, jump into whatever poor technician was stationed in the control room at the moment, and then…well, only Gallifrey (to its sheer misfortune) knew what the Master would do next.

The Doctor found himself at a crossroads. He could telepathically shout at the Master from within the Matrix, but the Master could just ignore him (something he must’ve been doing already, because if the Doctor could sense him, the Master must have felt the Doctor’s presence tenfold). But there was nothing else the Doctor could do to try to stop the Master like this. His only other option was to follow the Master: jump into some poor innocent’s body, somehow convince the Master of the folly of his ways, and drag him (kicking and screaming, if need be) back home.

The Doctor was certain he’d come up with worse plans over his lives, but he couldn’t particularly think of any at the moment.

So, naturally, he dove in.

His mind strained and twisted through the pinhole, and then suddenly he was on the other side. He’d tried to brace himself, but the sheering force of entropy was overwhelming. He felt himself being ripped apart, all intention and thought and reason being shredded mercilessly. His mind frayed and unravelled, oblivion closing in with terrifying finality from all sides, burning him from the edges ever inward. He would have screamed if he could, begged the Master to save him, _anything_ just to make the rending of his existence stop.

And then, suddenly, it did. The Doctor’s mind pulsed several times, the psychic equivalent to long, deep breaths. He existed. He was intact. The frayed edges of his consciousness reconstituted himself, and he was able to remember that, as he’d streamed out of the Matrix, he’d aimed himself for the one available figure he’d been able to see from inside. Good job he had, too, because once he’d left the Matrix, the pain had been too unbearable to aim or think or do anything but die a painful mind-death.

The Doctor took a few moments to reorient himself. He felt something like awe that the Master had lived like that for so long: every time he’d hopped bodies, he must’ve felt exactly that agony. It was still horrible what the Master had done to all those people, but brilliant, impressive, astonishing. The Doctor felt the sudden, familiar urge to lick the Master all over.

But first he needed to get his Master back. Gingerly packing the mind of the body he’d possessed in telepathic bubble-wrap so as not to damage it during this brief sojourn, the Doctor turned his attention to the universe he’d loved so dearly during his lifetime. He could see and feel clearly now in the real world, and the reality was entirely different from what he’d inferred from within the Matrix.

For one, the body he occupied wasn’t a Time Lord. The bubble-wrap metaphor turned out to be apropos because he now appeared to be a Bullarian: a semi-corporeal race that consisted of a gossamer bio-organic filament covered in air-breathing stoma that generated large filmy oxygen sacks. Tegan had once referred to them as “bubble-people”, and that was exactly what they looked like: a giant cluster of soap bubbles in vaguely humanoid shape.

The body the Master occupied wasn’t Time Lord, either. The Master, who was now scowling at him with hands on hips, was currently possessing an Anemonite: whereas the Doctor was a giant anthropoid bubble-monster, the Master was a giant anthropoid sea anemone. Well, that wouldn’t make this conversation weird at _all_. The Master’s skin was a base sea-foam green at the moment, and the twitching six-inch tentacles that covered his body from head to mid-trunk were a deep purple. Uh-oh, green and purple usually signalled that the Anemonite in question was irate to the point of releasing an electrical sting into the air.

The Doctor rubbed his vocal air sacks together and bubbled, “What? _What_?”

The Master’s tentacles twitched in annoyance at this scintillating insight into their current predicament.

The Doctor hastily babbled to clarify, “What’s going on? How did these people get into the Matrix control room?”

The Master grunted, and his tentacles flickered to a more relaxed peach colour. He turned back to the console and resumed whatever mayhem he had planned there. “Gallifrey’s been destroyed.”

“What _again_?”

“Again.”

The Doctor sighed resignedly. “What number is that this time?”

“Who knows?” the Master agreed wearily. “Not the first, and I dread to think it, but probably not the last. Our generous hosts”—his tentacles flashed neon-green in defiance for a moment—“appear to be some sort of salvage crew trying to steal Gallifrey’s technology while it’s unguarded.”

The Doctor snorted: a process of bubbles burbling into more bubbles. “Good luck trying to get any of it working without a Rassilon imprimatur.”

“Indeed,” the Master agreed. “But they serve their purpose.” His attention was still on the console.

The Doctor leaned over to try to see what he was up to. It turned out that the Bullarian body the Doctor possessed was tied to a chair. The Master must’ve possessed the Anemonite, tied up their Bullarian associate, and…profit? “What are you doing?” he demanded. “I don’t suppose you’re going to untie me now?”

The Master snorted once at the idiocy of that. “I’m going to blow up the universe,” he announced.

“What, really?” The Doctor blinked. And then, upon consideration, drawled out, “…Nah.”

The Master turned on him with red tentacles flailing viciously. “What do mean ‘nah’?” he demanded in outrage. “I have every surviving weapon from the Time War aimed at all the fixed points within range. Take those out, and I’ll collapse all of time and space. You don’t think I would do it? Because I absolutely would! Have done once, even…sort of…well, until you interfered at least…” His skin flushed a dull orange and his tentacles retracted because that whole affair with him accidentally erasing one-third of the universe really had been rather embarrassing.

The Doctor kindly refrained from continuing on with that very sensitive topic, and covertly began extending one bubble-tendril of a toe in the direction of the circuits beneath the console. “If you destroy the universe,” he pointed out, “you’ll destroy the Matrix with it. That includes us, by the way.”

“Yes, I _know_ that includes us!” the Master snapped. Dark blue spots were wavering across his skin now, and his tentacles had flattened out and gone white. “I’m not stupid. And certainly not as dull-witted as you are. Turned a bit bubble-brained in that body, have you?”

“Watch your mouth!” the Doctor protested. “My host takes umbrage at that, I’ll have you know.” His bubble toe had reached the console now, and he rubbed it over all the circuits and wires, sudsing them up. It worked so well that he also began rubbing the soap suds of the bubbles of his upper appendages along the rope at the back of the chair. Amazing how fast it turned everything slippery. He just had to keep the Master talking a little bit longer. “You’ve found some way for the Matrix to survive the destruction of the universe?” he asked incredulously. “Because, no offense…”

“Yes, yes, it’s a sensitive data core locked into sync with the Eye of Harmony.” The Master brushed this critique aside. “I know more about the inner Matrix workings than you do, you do realise.”

“And even if you _have_ found a bypass, there’s still a real living you and a real living me out there somewhere.” The Doctor retracted his bubble-toe and tilted his head-bubble back so that he looked up in the direction where the stars would be above the Citadel. “You’ll destroy them, too.”

“We can take care of ourselves,” the Master insisted, flicked a switch, and swore as the output screen sparked and sputtered as it short-circuited at him.

“No luck?” The Doctor eyed the Master out of the corner (well, curve, really) of his bubbles, kept his head back to streamline his body as best he could, and slipped down through the film-slicked ropes to freedom.

The Master threw open the access panel beneath the command centre and scowled at the sodden, sudsy mess the Doctor had made of all the firing mechanisms. “Did you just _save the universe_?” he accused, outraged, spinning around to face the Doctor, who was now standing (well, floating as a blob of bubbles) behind him.

The Doctor tried his best to look sheepish, without having a proper face. “Might have done,” he admitted guiltily.

“You promised you’d given that up!” the Master sulked, looking completely unsurprised. “Escaped already too, have you? My, how quickly we fall back into old habits.” His tentacles were quivering agitatedly.

The Doctor rolled the film of his bubble-eyes. “Now,” he said, popping tiny little micro-bubbles against the Master’s tentacles soothingly, “what’s this really all about?”

“ _About_?” the Master repeated furiously, flaring back up to sea-foam green and purple again, oh dear. The Doctor’s bubble-hand cluster popped at the sharpness of the Master’s stings. “What makes you think this is _about_ anything?”

“Yeah…” the Doctor bubbled out incredulously, and reformed his hand: ouch, that had smarted. “This morning you’re fucking me into the mattress, right as rain, and then you scarper off to destroy both of us, all the rest of us in the Matrix, our real-life selves, and the entire universe as well. Nothing off about that, not at all.”

The Master flashed neon-green at him and got his tentacles all up in the Doctor’s suds. For some species somewhere, it was probably quite erotic. “Everything’s _fine_ ,” he hissed. “This is just who I _am_.”

“I’ve certainly never heard that one before…”

Around about this time, the Master would normally scowl and snort like a charging bull and force the Doctor down over some hard surface. However, the Master was basically a giant walking sea anemone at this point, so instead he just sort of hopped up to the Doctor on his pedal disk until he was squished up against the Doctor and then wavered agitatedly at him. It was a very intimidating sort of hop-squish-waver, though, really.

The Doctor popped and burbled against him in response.

“Don’t,” the Master said, low and dangerous, “underestimate me.”

“Is that what you think I’m doing?” the Doctor asked.

The Master turned back to the control panel peevishly. He gave it one sharp sting with his tentacles, which just caused it to hiss and smoke piteously. His trunk slumped in response. “And if I can’t destroy the universe from here, I’ll find somewhere that I _can_ ,” he threatened.

“Yeah… What’s with the sudden universe-destroying kick?” the Doctor asked. “Not a criticism, mind you, just curiosity. Usually it’s more universe-conquering.”

“The universe is superfluous to requirements now,” the Master insisted. “It’s unnecessary, pointless, and it annoys me. I want to watch it burn.”

‘Aaaaaand?’ the Doctor would’ve mouthed if he’d had a mouth and not a cluster of bubbles that squeezed together.

“…And _you_ care about it!” the Master concluded. The ‘more than you care about me’ was left unsaid.

The Doctor relaxed: this was familiar footing after all, even if the Doctor technically had no feet at the moment and was hovering in mid-air with the force of the breeze from a nearby vent, and the Master really only had one big columnar foot. “Come on,” he urged. “Let’s count this one as a tie – very clever sneaking out of the Matrix, by the way; you’ll have to tell me how you managed it – and then we can go back home, where we’ll have proper body parts again, and you can do anything you like to me. And I mean _anything_.”

However, this just seemed to enrage the Master further. “You’re not taking me seriously!” the Master accused, hopping greenly and flapping his tentacles about in hot-pink fury.

“Now, where would you ever get that idea?” The Doctor was never more grateful not to have a face that could give him away.

“You know it’s true.” Despite the Master’s comical appearance, his voice was cold and deadly. The Doctor couldn’t help but take him equally deadly serious. “All our lives, it’s been like this.”

“Like what?”

“I…” The Master flailed some tentacles in the air and turned an abashed puce, as if too embarrassed to say the words aloud. “And you…”

“You’re really going to have to be more articulate than that,” the Doctor said.

“ _You_ ,” the Master accused, just as inarticulately as before, but then it all came out in a sudden torrent, as if the dam had just been waiting to burst. “Oh, sure, _sometimes_ you’ll come out and play, if the mood suits you. But you’d sooner run off to your precious universe, run as far and fast from anything _serious_ as you can. No matter how elaborate or ingenious my schemes, it’s wham-bam-thank-you-Master, and then you’re off again. I’ve always been secondary to you. Your interest in me is,” the Master flashed a frightened silvery-grey for one moment before composing himself at least that much again, “ _perfunctory_.”

“That,” the Doctor retorted, “is absolutely not true!” He wafted in closer and placed a teasing trail of bubbles along the Master’s arm, trying to soothe him. “Maybe I’ve got distracted at certain points in my lives,” he conceded, “and we _did_ have that catastrophic fall-out – I’m not denying my part in that – but I’d thought we’d got to a good place, the two of us.” He popped a few bubbles deliberately along the Master’s tentacles to make him shiver. “And now,” he insisted, “we have _everything_. Just you and me, together forever. You have my absolute, undivided attention.”

“And it’s meaningless!” the Master shouted, voice cracking. “When it _mattered_ , when we were alive, you wouldn’t so much as look at me. Oh no. It took me being literally the only other Time Lord in existence for _you_ to come after _me_ for a change. And you think you prioritise me first now? I’m _the only thing there is_! You still prioritise me _last_ , it’s just that now I’m all there is!”

The Doctor froze, aghast at the accusation, bubbles agape, trying to think of what to say, how to tell the Master how _wrong_ he was.

With perfectly awful timing, a Kalaxian Repair Bot took that moment to scoot right between them. They were both forced to step (well, float and hop, respectively) back to allow the bot to pass. Like all of its ilk, it looked like a giant, metallic-silver, five-foot-high toaster on wheels, with various mechanical arms sporting grasping hooks and tools at the front.

“Toot-toot, coming through!” the giant scooter-toaster announced as it ploughed right through them. “Drama llamas, to the side!”

The Doctor got some (probably poor) words together, and turned back to the Master to say them. Then paused and side-eyed the giant scooter-toaster instead. “Wait, was that _Missy_?” he asked suspiciously.

“Missy?” the scooter-toaster repeated with wide-camera-lensed innocence. “Who eez theez ‘Missy’?” The scooter-toaster turned to address the Master. “ _I’m_ done, dearie. Whenever the two of you are done beating your chests and proclaiming your undying angst to each other, come see me.” She (it?) rotated on her wheels to ogle the Doctor up and down with her optic lenses. “You come up and see me some time, too,” she said in what was possibly supposed to be a Mae West impersonation; it was always hard to tell with Missy’s attempts at accents, even when she possessed normal vocal cords. One of the camera lenses had the gall to wink at the Doctor, and then he _felt_ her biodata leave the scooter-toaster and stream, lightning quick, back down through the pinhole and into the Matrix once more. The next instant, she was gone.

The scooter-toaster she’d left behind waggled its hooks in confusion, trying to figure out what had just possessed it and what was going on.

“You Masters are up to something!” the Doctor accused, drifting back around on an air gust to face the Master again.

“Of course I’m up to something!” the Master snapped. “That’s the whole point! I’m _always_ up to something!” His tone turned vicious. “What, did you think that just because you’d finally nobly sacrificed your body to me, that I’d give up my nefarious ways? Such a brave martyr!”

“That’s not why I—” The Doctor couldn’t help but be impressed by the Master’s unfailing ability to misinterpret his every action.

“Because I hate to break it to you, honey, but you’re not _that_ good.”

The Doctor’s protest caught in his throat on the sudden lump there. “I…” he finally said helplessly.

“Do whatever you want,” the Master said with icy dispassion. “ _I_ have stolen myself a new body – a whole new lease on life. And I am going to use it, as I always have done, to make the universe _bleed_ my name.”

“What?” the Doctor said. “No? You’re not coming back?” He burbled a bubble arm to point in the direction of the pinhole back home.

“Why ever would I? None of that is real. There’s no pain, no suffering, no thrill of seeing the light go out of a pathetic little mortal’s eyes and knowing that that’s it, I’ve _ended_ them permanently.”

“Don’t—”

“Don’t what?” the Master sneered. “‘Oh Master, don’t kill those poor innocent people? Don’t destroy my precious universe? Don’t _be like this_?’” He’d affected a cute little voice for his Doctor impersonation, but now his tone turned low and vicious once more. “This is the way I’ve _always been_ , no matter how much you try to deny it! This is _me_! This is why you’ve _always hated me_!”

“Don’t…” the Doctor continued piteously, pointlessly, “don’t _leave me_!”

The Master hopped back, as if the Doctor’s unexpected words were a slap to the face. “What? You want to come with me?” He laughed, a startled, manic sound. “Does that sound fun to you, Doctor? Can’t wait to hop around between bodies, stealing the lives of others to save our own. You’ll enjoy it when these stolen bodies start to decay, unable to contain our Time Lord essences. Do you know how _painful_ it is to burst free of an ill-fitting body’s skin, decaying it slowly from inside? Would you like that? Extinguishing the mind of that Bullarian once and for all, and stealing their existence? Their name is Oscar, by the way. Will you live in Oscar’s place? And then another’s, and another’s? Oh, maybe someday we’ll find a way to give ourselves Time Lord bodies again. At that point, all other life would be superfluous to our needs. I think I’ll obliterate every other living being, no take-backsies this time. Would you like to watch that?”

The Doctor, for once, couldn’t think of a single thing to say to the list of horrors the Master had laid out before him.

“There, see, now you know the truth.” The words were triumphant, but the Master’s tentacles had gone a dingy grey, broken and defeated. “You _hate_ me. You’d be so much happier going back to your afterlife fantasy, where nothing can ever go wrong. No need to feel guilty about it, even: if you don’t thwart me, I’m sure your living counterpart will do it for you. You’re dead, no longer needed. _You_ can be content with that.”

Something stirred in the Doctor at that, and he repeated the only words he had, a mere bubbled whisper this time, “Don’t leave me.”

The Master snorted. “You’re really going to stick with that strategy? It served you so well the last time.”

The Doctor whimpered at the memory. He’d felt the Master’s life go out in his arms: never again. “I don’t care,” he said. “I will follow you, to the ends of any universe you choose. I will do whatever it takes, no matter how terrible. And I will hate myself – absolutely, I will – but, no matter what, I will never, ever hate _you_ for what I’ve become. You’re right that I’m dead and the Matrix is just a pretty fantasy, and what that means is: I am no longer the Doctor. I am free to do whatever I want. And the _only_ thing – the first thing, my top priority – that I want is you.”

It was the Master’s turn to gape stupidly then, but he gave himself away: his skin turned a loving butter-yellow colour, and his tentacles flared a deep midnight-blue in preparation to spawn. “You’re lying,” he said weakly.

“I’m not lying,” the Doctor insisted, bubbling up close to him. “You want to be vengeful possessing ghosts and haunt the cosmos together? I’ll follow.” He leaned in to pop a ripple of micro-bubbles against the Master’s cheek, the closest thing this body could approximate to a kiss. “Wherever you lead.”

The Master’s tentacles quivered in response, and he leaned his trunk into the Doctor. “This isn’t fair,” he said petulantly.

“Seems fair to me. You chased me for long enough. Now it’s my turn.”

“How can you…?” The Master trailed off helplessly and looked him directly in the eye…bubble. “How can you look at me and not loathe me?”

“How can _you_ look at _me_ and not loathe me?”

“I could never loathe you; you’re incredible!”

“And I could never loathe you; you’re just as incredible.”

The Master snorted. “You realise that we are the only people in the universe stupid enough to tolerate each other?”

“Yeah…” the Doctor agreed fondly. “Best stick together then, right?”

The Master forced back a sniff. “Right.”

“Soooo?”

The Master quavered. On the one side was the universe (which, yes, beckoned to him, too) eager for destruction, and on the other side was not really much else except maybe, just maybe, a place where the only person he’d ever loved might not have to hate himself quite so much. He’d always made it a point in life until now to twist the knife ever deeper into the Doctor’s self-loathing, but he wasn’t technically alive right now, was he? Just as the Doctor wasn’t truly the Doctor anymore, he wasn’t technically the Master. He was at a crossroads. A choice.

He took the Doctor’s bubble-appendage in one be-tentacled hand. “Let’s go home,” he offered the first genuine compromise possibly in the entire history of their relationship.

The Doctor let out a pathetic whimpering noise. “What?” he said, hardly daring to hope.

“It’s just,” the Master hedged, “that I’ve grown rather fond of that pretty mouth and skinny arse of your regular body, and…well…” One of his tentacles prodded one of the Doctor’s bubbles, causing it to pop in a way that made the Doctor moan erotically. “I can only do that so many times to this body before you pop entirely away. Our original bodies have better stamina.”

The Doctor gulped and nodded, like that was an entirely valid reason for the Master to give up terrorising the known universe. It was certainly more plausible than the idea of the Master making a concession just to make him happy.

The Master led him back to the pinhole, where the scooter-toaster formerly possessed by Missy had now recovered itself and was saying, “Danger, danger! Shield reactivation imminent!”

The Doctor frowned at that. The Master smiled a sinister smile back at him. “Trust me?” he requested, reaching out with his mind.

Trusting any Master – let alone this one – was absolutely the stupidest thing the Doctor could ever have done, and he did so immediately with sloppy relief.

The Master tugged at the threads that held the Doctor’s mind in his body, and the Doctor slipped free of the Bullarian’s – Oscar’s – body and back into entropy’s cold clutches. Only this time, the Master’s mind wrapped around him, like an overcoat held over his head to protect him from the falling rain, and dashed the two of them back through the pinhole into the Matrix.

***

“Well, you two took your sweet time, didn’t you?” Missy’s sneer was the first sight that greeted the Master once he’d stepped willingly back into his prison of an afterlife. His eyes darted over to spot where the Doctor’s TARDIS was extending its reality shields around them: that explained why they had corporeal form, then.

The Master loosed his grip on his Doctor, ever so slightly. He’d thought he’d have to shield the Doctor all the way back to their mindscapes. The TARDIS simplified matters.

“Out of the way.” Missy nudged him with her hip and then her umbrella so that she could spy back out through their peephole. “Ooh, they’re scrambling now!” she said, gleefully.

“How long did you give them to get back to their ship before the shields come back up and trap them in the Matrix control room forever?”

“Hey!” the Doctor complained. “You said to trust you! If you’re trapping them for eternity—”

“I,” the Master corrected, “absolutely _would_ have trapped them for eternity, but Missy was in charge of reactivating the shields, and she’s always been a soft touch.” He smiled a toothy, shark-like smile at the Doctor and groped that perfect skinny arse of his. “See? You _can_ trust me.”

The Doctor grumbled at semantics. Missy turned to give the Master an icy glare at being called ‘soft’.

“Well?” the Master demanded.

“They’ve got five minutes left,” Missy relented, reluctantly. “That’s plenty of time to escape, if they don’t dawdle.”

“And if they _do_ dawdle?” the Doctor asked.

Missy curled her lip. “ _Dawdlers_ deserve their fates.” She turned back to look through the pinhole. “Oh look, they’ve run for it now. No reason to think they won’t make it. Then the shields come up, and no more interlopers will be able to land again on Gallifrey until…well, the Eye of Harmony burns out, I suppose.”

“Or one of ourselves blows it up,” the Master said.

“That, too,” Missy agreed.

“Just what are you two up to?” the Doctor demanded suspiciously.

“Nothing you need concern your pretty head about,” Missy informed him condescendingly. “Usual time, usual place?” She winked at the Master in the least-covert gesture imaginable.

“Oh, fine, whatever,” the Master grumbled, and turned back to the Doctor, who was looking really quite agitated at all the nefarious dealings afoot. “I said: _trust me_.”

The Doctor, miraculously, shut his mouth and nodded.

The Master got a sinking feeling in his stomach, like some stupid impulse deep inside him actually wanted to be worthy of the Doctor’s trust.

“Toodle-oo, pip-pip, and all that! You boys have fun with your never-ending melodrama!” Missy said, dissolved back into a biodata stream, and dove through the Matrix in the direction of their mindscapes.

The Master didn’t even watch her go, so mesmerised was he by the look of dark purpose in the Doctor’s eyes.

“Let me,” the Doctor insisted, “take you _home_.” He took the Master’s hand in one of his and brought it up to his lips to brush a kiss across the Master’s knuckles.

The Master’s knees went a bit wobbly, and he let the Doctor pull him back into the TARDIS and thence to their bedroom where he’d belonged all along.

All the while, the Doctor’s eyes bored dark and hungry into his, not relenting for a moment. The Master found himself suddenly unable to look away from those eyes as if, for a change, he were the one being mesmerised.

“May I?” the Doctor asked ambiguously, guiding the Master back towards their bed.

There was a moment when the Master’s rightful, natural dominance asserted itself. He didn’t do this. The very notion! And he’d told the Doctor to trust _him_ , not this thing, switched the other way around, where the Doctor took him into his mercy and—

“Please?” the Doctor whispered hoarsely against the Master’s lips, the longing in his eyes still holding the Master caged.

The Master’s defensiveness faded away in an instant, fangs and claws retracted, prickles smoothed down. He nodded once jerkily.

The Doctor kissed him then, hands clamped on either side of the Master’s face, holding him in place so that the Doctor could reclaim every inch of his mouth. The Master felt his knees finally buckle at the intensity of the kiss, and his hands clung uselessly to the lapels of the Doctor’s coat in a desperate effort to keep himself upright.

As if to frustrate him, the Doctor vanished both their clothes in response, so that they were suddenly skin to skin. The Master’s hands splayed over the Doctor’s (frankly, unimpressively scrawny) chest, and the Doctor’s hands settled on the Master’s waist, inching him backwards, backwards…

The Master let out a sharp gasp when the backs of his legs collided with the mattress, and his knees fully gave out so that he sat back upon it abruptly. The Doctor leaned over him slowly, cautiously, as if testing the waters, pressing the Master’s body down beneath him and scrambling just a bit at the end to get fully astride him.

“Not so bad, is it?” the Doctor breathed hotly against the skin of the Master’s shoulder once he’d borne him fully down onto the bed.

The Master felt his heartrates accelerate. It was so wrong, lying back like this, falling open. He wanted to fight and scream and shout and claw his way back on top. At the same time, nothing he’d ever done to try to quell the gaping loneliness inside had worked half as well as having his Doctor covering him at long last.

He managed to get out a shuddering, wheezing little breath enough to say, “Don’t you dare think this means you’ve _won_ ,” before the Doctor’s lips descended on his, and all higher thought faded.

The Doctor kissed him deep and long, one hand holding the Master’s chin in place just strongly enough that the Master could feel the strained tendons in the Doctor’s fingers against his cheek and knew that anything short of a full-on panicked struggle wouldn’t be enough to escape. He did feel the stirrings of panic boiling inside him, but the feeling was outmatched by the very creative things the Doctor’s tongue was doing to him. Testing the sharpness of his teeth, enticing his own tongue into a quick tangle, thrusting deep one moment and then gently tracing his lips the next… As clever as ever, that tongue.

The Master felt a more intimate caress then, this time tracing the contours of his mind. He lashed out instinctively, got the Doctor to flinch back for a moment, but then the Doctor pressed back into his consciousness relentlessly.

“Let me in,” _let me in_ , the Doctor whispered against his lips and thoughts.

An aggressive snarl struggled to make its way to the surface. The Master knew what he needed to do: overpower the Doctor, force him beneath him, take and take and take until there was no question who was the master and who was…

The Doctor pulled back long enough to look down at him with dark, adoring eyes. “You are absolutely brilliant,” he said in what sounded like genuine awe. “I don’t deserve— I…” Something seemed to catch in his throat, and his Adam’s apple bobbed once as he swallowed. “I _crave_ you,” he finally settled on.

The Master’s unspoken protests died in response. Yes, he could live with that: dark, twisted obsession. It was all he’d allowed himself to feel for so long, and he’d always needed to see it reflected back at him. _Craved_ it, even.

The Doctor was upon him again then, his body nudging the Master’s limbs one inch at a time into position, his thoughts scraping roughly along the ragged ridges of the Master’s psyche, dipping in and out of his thoughts as the two of them aligned themselves.

 _I don’t want this. I want it. I don’t want this. I want it._ The litany played over and over again in the Master’s mind as the Doctor kissed his way down the Master’s body. It wasn’t meant to be like this, but the Doctor’s tongue was so very persuasive, teasing a nipple here and tracing a rib there, downward and downward until…

“ _Fuck_ ,” the Master moaned aloud when the Doctor’s tongue made its first playful swirl around the head of the Master’s cock. No hesitation there: the Doctor just dove straight in, mouth first, the way he always did.

The Doctor’s tongue was a fickle, eager beast. One moment, it would be licking long enthusiastic stripes up and down the Master’s length like he was a lollipop, and then the next the Doctor would be mouthing the Master’s head, wet and soft and yielding.

The Master gave in to the unpredictability and, at long last, let the Doctor guide him up to heights of pleasure and then calm him back down again so as not to end this too quickly. By the end, he lay beneath the Doctor – loose, lax, languid – and unquestioningly ready for whatever the Doctor had planned next.

Nevertheless, the Doctor gave him plenty of forewarning. His finger stroked the Master’s perineum up and down several times soothingly, allowing him time to protest. And the urge to protest was still there, yes, but buried far at the back of the Master’s mind, a quiet little voice he could easily ignore. Much more interesting to see what the Doctor would do to him next.

The Doctor kissed his way back up the Master’s chest, and at the same time, his finger stopped teasing and instead pressed gently but firmly up against the Master’s hole. The Doctor let out a shocked gasp at just how easily the Master yielded to him. Even the Master was somewhat surprised, although not entirely: they had always been leading up to this, finally becoming equals in every sense of the word.

The Master opened his thighs for the Doctor, obscenely, just to watch the frantic look in the Doctor’s eyes as his brain short-circuited at what the Master was genuinely, willingly offering him.

“I…” The Doctor always had talked too much, except when it was important, and then he had no words to give.

“You…” the Master said. He bucked up with his hips to wrap his legs around the Doctor’s waist, trapping him and drawing him in. “Belong.” His hands clutched roughly in the chaotic spikes of the Doctor’s hair, dragging him down to the Master’s level. “To.” He slid experimentally up and against the Doctor, rubbing against the length of his cock to get them finally aligned just right. “Me!”

The Doctor, in helpless defeat, sank down into him, his cock plunging all the way into the trap the Master had laid out for him. A strangled groan escaped the Doctor’s lips when he’d seated himself at home within the Master at long last, conquered through and through.

The Master breathed harshly against the Doctor’s mouth, feeling the stretch and burn of the Doctor inside him, revelling in the sweetness of pain and the sharpness of pleasure once the Doctor began his first tentative rocks in and out of the Master’s body.

The Doctor’s baser instincts took over quickly then, barely suppressed beneath the surface in this incarnation. His hips thrust repeatedly into the Master, almost violently, taking what had been denied him repeatedly for so long.

“You are mine!” the Master snapped out, while the Doctor’s cock snapped just as hard inside him, insisting that it was the exact opposite.

Or maybe, wonderfully, both at once: the Doctor was the Master’s, and the Master was the Doctor’s, and there was no difference between them, no distinction. They were one and the same, and they would soar and burn together in this purgatory for all eternity, and neither of them would have it any other way.

It didn’t matter then that the Matrix walls were data-thin, and nothing lived and nothing died, and everything else was a lie. Because the one real, true thing in all the Matrix was the Doctor, and as long as the Master had that, he really did have everything that mattered.

He dove his way down into the Doctor’s mind, through the self-righteous façade, past the turbulent dark waters beneath, further and further to the bright shining core of him – such hope and optimism – and then beyond that to the fears and insecurities – the almost shy child the Master had once known, who’d dreamed of the stars but been beaten down by the bounds of the Gallifreyan society, until finally there they were: the Doctor’s true feelings for him. He’d clawed his way through all the Doctor’s fronts at long last and there, _there_ …

There, he intrigued the Doctor and infuriated him, drove him mad with want and mad with sorrow. There, he embodied so much that the Doctor needed, yet also so many of the Doctor’s fears of what he himself could become. He was the Doctor’s dark shadow, and also that inner itch beneath the Doctor’s psyche that the Doctor was afraid to ever scratch.

The Master understood the Doctor’s fears and hesitations. He had them too. That was why he’d never looked into the Doctor’s feelings for him before. He’d told himself not to, psyched himself against it, convinced himself that there would be nothing but ugly, filthy hatred that he never needed – nor wanted – to see.

Now, though, for the first time in all his lives, he thought himself a genuine fool. Because there was no hate to be found here, true to all the Doctor’s words. Instead there was…

The Doctor had continued to fuck him, almost proprietarily, while the Master plumbed his subconscious. But now the Doctor pulled the Master back to the physical world with a particularly vicious thrust – almost worthy of the Master himself! – and growled against the Master’s ear the words that no Doctor was ever meant to say and no Master was ever meant to hear:

“I love you.”

The Master trembled beneath him.

“I love you, knowing everything that you are.”

The Master squeezed his eyes tight at the onslaught.

“I love you, _because of_ everything that you are.”

The Master’s carefully constructed defences crumpled.

“I love you, not because you’re the only other Time Lord remaining but because, if I could _choose_ any other to be the last with me, I’d choose _you_.”

The Master’s walls finally caved, and he came screaming and scrambling tooth and nail for every purchase he could find on his Doctor, fighting in vain against the laws of time itself to make this moment drag out forever.

“I love you, I love you, I love you…” the Doctor whispered against the harsh, grating stubble of his cheek, repeating his litany again and again as he released all that he was into the Master’s body, sealing the circle between them at long last.

They collapsed together in the aftermath, drained and raw and weary down to the bones.

And then, despite himself, the Master found himself smiling, laughing, letting out a maniacal cackle to surpass every other maniacal cackle he’d made to date (and that was quite an impressive number of maniacal cackles, indeed).

“What?” the Doctor asked, sleepy and confused, tangled contentedly in the Master’s arms.

“You _love_ me!” the Master accused, with evil glee. “ _Me_!”

“Well, yes,” the Doctor agreed. “S’pose I do.”

The Master just started laughing harder. “It’s a stupid, meaningless emotion,” he insisted. “Not fit for Time Lords. Base. Unsophisticated. _Human_. I always warned you about spending too much time on Earth.” He made the words sound as cruel as he could, but somehow they didn’t come at way, as if he were lying to himself.

The Doctor tried it out against the Master’s lips one more time. “I love you.”

The Master snorted. “And they call me mad.”

“Don’t be silly,” the Doctor said, nuzzling against the Master’s throat, “I’ve always been madder than you.”

“Oh, must you turn _everything_ into a competition?” the Master snarled and placed one hand flat on the Doctor’s chest to force him down onto his back.

The Doctor went with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re my pillow today,” the Master informed him, and proceeded to use the Doctor’s chest exactly as such.

“Oh. All right, then.”

“Not a word,” the Master insisted with a little smile, opening all his senses to breathe in his Doctor’s permeating scent.

“Of course not,” the Doctor agreed.

“Good.”

“Happy now?” the Doctor asked casually, but the question was anything but.

The Master paused, considered, and found himself perfectly content. He wasn’t entirely sure who he was without that unfulfilled yearning at the core of him, but he thought that maybe… “Yes,” he agreed. “Happy.”

“Oh,” the Doctor said, his fingers rubbing soporific little circles into the hair at the back of the Master’s neck. “Good.”

“Yes,” the Master said eloquently, and buried himself in his Doctor’s embrace, “I suppose it is. At long last, it actually is.”

He felt the Doctor let out a relaxed sigh beneath him. And, from now on, thought that he could live with that. Figuratively speaking, that is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit, one of the strangest ideas I've ever had to resolve a bout of writer's block was: "Wait, what if I rewrote this entire scene, but with the Master as a GIANT SEA ANEMONE instead?!"


	2. Epilogue: Masterplan, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As with the last story: If you want to read this story as a stand-alone, feel free to ignore this epilogue, which is tying into an upcoming series plot point. On the other hand, the epilogue is why I added the tag 'The Master is a player', because that sure isn't about Simm!Master. :P

“Ooh, _someone’s_ late!” Missy teased when the Eighteenth Master finally sauntered over to slouch back against the wall beside her, next to the closed door. “Have you been naughty?”

The Master found himself unable to snark back, or do anything really but smile giddily to himself.

“Are you actually in a good mood?” Missy asked in disbelief. “My, you must have been very naughty, indeed.”

The Master waggled his eyebrows at her but refused to tell. “I take it we have the Doctor in there?” He nodded toward the closed door.

Missy snorted. “When does our Thirteenth ever not have the Doctor in there?” she asked rhetorically.

The Master sighed. “We should know better than to keep us waiting. Any idea which Doctor it is?”

Missy made a face. “We’d best hope it’s not the Third. We’ll be out here waiting for hours while they dote soppily over each other.”

The Master knew he should make a disparaging remark, but instead he couldn’t help remember his Tenth Doctor doting soppily over him, all but tattooing those forbidden words into his skin. In fact, he was half amazed that Missy couldn’t see it. It seemed like a thing like that should be even more obvious than the afterglow of sex. He wanted to scream it out into the Matrix: he was _loved_! And apparently that also made him incredibly stupid now. Small sacrifices.

Next to him, Missy continued to notice absolutely nothing. She examined her nails, scowled in displeasure, and scratched at a dollop of nail polish that had got onto her cuticle. “Any bets?” she asked, bored.

“Pardon?” The Master’s mind had been drifting stupidly again, back to his Doctor.

“My bet’s on the Fifth. Thought I heard some moaning in there earlier. You remember how loud the Fifth Doctor was.”

“Oh, um, yes. Very loud.”

“Who are you betting on?” Missy asked.

The Master blinked at her. Oh, right, which Doctor was in there with their Thirteenth. He found himself not particularly caring, even about being made to wait, about anything really except the fact that the Tenth Doctor unequivocally _loved_ him and had _chosen_ him and—

“Well?”

“Oh, who knows,” the Master said. “Maybe he’s got all six of them in there pleasuring him at once.”

“Come on, be serious. Everyone _knows_ it’s all but impossible to get two Doctors into the same bed as each other. Make a reasonable guess.”

“Make me,” the Master retorted childishly.

Missy stuck her nose up in the air. “Fine, if you don’t want to play for keeps, just say so.”

The Master snorted.

They waited together in silence for a few minutes, and the Master almost felt in a good enough mood to apologise for upsetting her, but he hadn’t gone quite _that_ insane, not yet at least.

Fortunately, at that moment the door opened.

“What do I get if it’s not the Fifth?” the Master asked. “Free hits?” It was a sort of apology, in a way.

“Absolutely nothing,” Missy informed him huffily. “ _I_ get free hits when your absolutely idiotic guess proves false.”

They both watched expectantly, and the Fourth Doctor popped out. “Oh, hello there. Jelly baby?”

The two of them shrugged and both went for the same green one at the same time. The Fourth Doctor breezed by them, leaving them to draw and quarter the poor unfortunate jelly baby between them.

They each ate their respective halves grudgingly when the door opened again and out came…

“No…” the Master breathed in disbelief.

Missy clutched his arm, digging her nails into his skin painfully to make sure he wasn’t dreaming.

The Seventh Doctor offered them a sly wink and strode right on by, head held high and proud, humming an obnoxiously jaunty tune under his breath.

Missy held up two fingers, and the Master nodded numbly. As if in response, the door opened again, and out bounded the Eighth Doctor.

Very slowly, Missy raised a third shaky finger.

The Master’s eyes narrowed on the door. He suddenly realised that he actually had a chance to win this. “Come on, come on…” he started egging his Thirteenth self on.

“Oh, come now. Where would you even put four Doctors?” Missy insisted.

They were both left to consider the answer quite thoroughly, because then the door opened again, and there was the Sixth Doctor. He blushed and blustered at their gaping expressions, and hied himself off.

“Only two to go,” the Master said.

“If you actually win this, I’ll kill you.”

“Promises, promises!”

The door bumbled a bit this time, and then the Fifth Doctor bumbled fittingly out of it. He gave them a very nervous-looking smile and squeezed out between the two of them. They just _might_ have stood a bit closer together in front of the door, just to feel him up a bit as he passed. After all, no Master could in good conscience let a pretty Doctor go unmolested. He yelped just as satisfactorily as they both remembered.

“I am absolutely going to kill you,” Missy stated when the Fifth Doctor had finally squirmed away.

The Master watched the door with her expectantly. “I was kidding!” he protested. “I didn’t actually think—”

The door opened one last time and there, before them, was the Third Doctor, ruffles and frills and fluffy hair awry, eyes a little glazed. The Thirteenth Master was with him, hand at the small of his back. “I’ll call upon you soon, my dear,” he all but purred to the Third Doctor, and after all the Doctors he’d just apparently had, he deserved to purr.

The Eighteenth Master and Missy gaped at him in jealous awe as he dismissed the last of his six Doctors with a knowing smile and a kiss. The Third Doctor sauntered off, looking supremely satisfied.

“Please,” the Thirteenth Master said graciously, stepping aside so that they could pass him, “do come in.”

The Eighteenth Master all but staggered inside, Missy right behind him. The Thirteenth Master shut the door smoothly after them, the suave devil.

“How did you _do_ that?” the Eighteenth Master blurted out in disbelief.

Missy, meanwhile, had immediately made a beeline for the bedroom. “Can six Doctors even _fit_ in that bed at once?” she demanded sceptically.

“I mean, didn’t they just bicker endlessly?” the Eighteenth Master insisted.

“Their mouths,” the Thirteenth Master said calmly and sat down in a plush-looking armchair, “were otherwise engaged.”

“ _All_ of them?!”

The Thirteenth Master smiled smugly but didn’t answer. “More importantly, I believe the two of you were set to complete phase two of our little plan?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Missy agreed, still looking a bit stunned. “Phase two. Completed. Easy-peasy.”

“We now have control of the Matrix’s dataflow,” the Eighteenth Master reported.

“Excellent!” The Thirteenth Master clasped his hands together.

“Where do we stand, then, overall?” Missy demanded.

“Phase one is ready as well,” the Thirteenth Master informed them.

“Then we’re ready to move on to phase three?” the Eighteenth Master asked. “Because I’m looking forward to that phase.” His teeth glinted in the light.

“There is one teensy little snag, though,” Missy said, holding up her thumb and forefinger so that only a few millimetres separated them.

“Oh?” The Thirteenth Master’s eyebrow rose, unimpressed.

Missy rolled her eyes up heavenward innocently. “ _Someone_ brought his Doctor along for the ride, for some out-of-Matrix hanky-panky. No, don’t ask me who; I’ll never tell!”

The Eighteenth Master glared at her. “That’s not a snag!” he insisted. “And we did not engage in out-of-Matrix ha—”

“I saw your tentacle pierce his bubble, darling,” Missy accused.

“Enough!” the Thirteenth Master cut them off before they could really go off on each other. “What’s the potential damage?”

“None at all,” the Eighteenth Master insisted smoothly. “I kept him thoroughly preoccupied throughout. _I_ ,” he said snidely, “know how to properly handle my Doctor.”

Missy snorted loudly in disbelief. “He’s even more gaga over Doctor Skinny-Arse than usual. You should have seen the way he was smiling earlier,” she informed the Thirteenth Master conspiratorially.

The Thirteenth Master looked weary. “Is it too much to hope for some sort of unbiased assessment of the situation from you two?”

“Yes,” they both agreed in perfect unison.

They turned to each other and shrugged.

“The Doctor knows we’ve been in and out of the Matrix, working on something together,” the Eighteenth Master conceded.

“But,” Missy agreed, “he doesn’t know what.”

The Thirteenth Master stroked his beard thoughtfully. “We’ll just have to be careful that he doesn’t learn anything further, not until we’re ready to make our move.”

“And are we ready, then?” the Eighteenth Master asked.

“Oh, yes,” the Thirteenth Master agreed, “stage three of the Masterplan is a-go.”


End file.
